2005 Archives

Candlelight

Contrary to what JTA thinks, it’s quite easy to read by candlelight. I couldn’t sleep last night (or, to put it another way, I wasn’t even remotely tired by the time Claire went to bed, which is perhaps more a result of the fact that she’s not used to getting up so early in the morning as she had to yesterday, for her first exam), so I ended up reading for quite awhile to the light of two candles, and the light levels were fine. Perhaps your gamma correction is turned down too low, JTA… I have a screwdriver…

Right now I’m reading A Long Way Down, by Nick Hornby, which is quit un-put-downable. Darker than Hornby’s usual wit, it tells the story of four people who, coincidentally, on one particular New Year’s Eve, all choose the same tower block from which to commit suicide. The story is told, alternately, from their four unique perspectives, using their own unique language, and it’s… well… it’s just a fascinating story, so far.

And now, I’d better get off to work. But I’ll leave you with this satellite photo from Google Maps – what’s the large object in the centre of the picture?

Face-Burning Chilli

Many of you reading this will have eaten one of my chilli con carnes before, where I’ve used my Da Bomb: The Final Answer hot sauce in the recipe before (original recipe). For those not in-the-know, when cooking chilli to feed four or so, I tend to use the following system to measure the hot sauce:

1. Dip last centimetre or two of a strand of spaghetti into sauce bottle.
2. Wipe excess sauce off back into bottle.
3. Dip spaghetti strand into chilli pan, then dispose of.

And this makes a nice, weighty, fruity (it’s not all about heat, y’know), strong chilli. It’s a powerful little sauce.

Anyway, while cooking this evening, I noticed that my upper lip was starting to go numb. This is normally a bad sign, indicative of having spilt an untraceable quantity of The Final Answer (dubbed who dares burns) on my fingers and then accidently having touched my face. I recall the time I hadn’t washed my hands quite well enough before going to bed with Claire, and you should have heard her scream…

…I digress. The stinging spread to my cheeks and got worse, and it took me some time to realise that what was causing this pain was, in fact, merely the habanero-infused steam ascending from my pans. Yes; the capsaicin quantity of this steam alone was enough to cause pain. This was where I became a little alarmed, and opened the window.

Surprisingly, this chilli is really quite mild… but I think I’ve come up with a recipe that makes toxic chilli-fied steam while it cooks, which is in it self remarkable. Now if only I can find a way to condense the steam and collect it into gas grenades…

Today’s Progress

Today’s progress – at work – has been stunning, compared to the problems of last week. This morning, I came in, plugged in, did the mandatory e-mail and blog checks, read some news, then got down to work. I slapped on some Pink Floyd (Echoes and Division Bell) and the code… just… worked. By just after lunchtime I’d finished everything I had to do today, and I’m now working on a quote for later in the week. Fabulous.

And, to those who I may not see, good luck to Andy, Bryn, Claire, Faye, Hayley, Jen, Jen, Jimmy, Jon, JTA, Katie, Liz, Paul, Pete, Ruth, Sian, Sundeep, and Suz (the latter of whom I presume has some) in their upcoming exams. And to anybody else I’ve missed.

My New Route Home From Work

Tide permitting, I’ve been taking a new route home from work. It’s not much of a shortcut, not even taking 30 seconds off my time to get home, but it’s certainly a lot more fun than the regular route. Of course; it’s only accessible at high tide, and it does take a little bit of balancing…

Looking down on the pipe from the bridge.

The ladder up the sea defences can be seen at the other end.

There’s a convenient ladder at the Aberystwyth side of the river, that can be seen up the side of the sea defences in the third photo.

Uplifting Text Message

Content Warning

This archived blog post has been flagged as containing content that treats or depicts people negatively based on their appearance or identity. This wasn't okay at the time and it isn't okay now.

I don't believe it's acceptable to pretend I didn't write them by removing them from the Internet - insofar as such a thing is even possible. However, I also don't want to give them any more visibility than they already have.

Just received the following text message from my sister:

me and mum just saw Reb D and she was fat, and had clothes on that did not match, and Frizzy hair, and we thought of u. love us Xx

For My Mum…

Crusty Snacks
“Does she?”

Claire

45 minutes ago Claire went to get dressed so we can leave the house. She’s just finished putting her jumper on.

Toaster Death

Our toaster at work just blew up. It’s an Inspirations 4-Slice Toaster and I’d recommend against it to anybody. It’s actually the second such toaster we’ve had: Alex bought one from Woolworths so we could toast things and before long it developed a problem such that only 2 of the slots actually worked (the others just held on to cold bread). Later still, it exploded as it was turned on, shooting blue sparks in a plume up to the ceiling.

This new toaster was a replacement, and it soon developed the same “2 slices only” problem. While Gareth was making himself toast this morning he loaded up all 4 slices and I reached over to demonstrate that a particular two didn’t work… as soon as I pressed the lever down, there was a flash: a sparkly orange plume shot up out of the device and the circuit breakers engaged.

So now I can’t have my muffins for breakfast. And I’m hungry.

Could Be A Lot Worse

At least my week’s getting better towards the end. Extracts from an e-mail from my mum:

…work – complete nightmare, back-to-back meetings most days with no time to implement the outcomes and so much work looming I don’t know where to start… …XXXXX is pregnant and leaving in a month or two (not to be replaced) and XXXXXXX’s contract is finishing soon which leaves….. er…. ME to do Banner support for the University (a task undertaken by teams of up to 20 at other Unis)… …One of the puppies is seriously ill with Juvenile Cellulitis and currently has a head twice the normal size and filled with pus… …antibiotics four times a day…. which means I have to go home every lunchtime… …we were raided by foxes and all the chickens have been taken… …to cap it all XXXXX is terminally ill (cancer) with only a few months to live…

My week seems just peachy by comparison. Hang in there, mum!

Andy’s Dingbats Challenge

Remember my dingbats challenges? (challenge 1, answers; challenge 2, answers) Well; Andy took my engine and made one of his own, which I forgot to link to earlier. Anyway, go take it if you like, but the answers are probably out by now.

It’s a little bit more random and weird and off-the-wall than mine, mind.

Busy Busy Busy

It’s going to be one of those weeks. I can tell: I haven’t finished stuff I was going to do on Monday morning yet. It’s not helped by the fact that we’ve had various computers fall over and we’ve got two French students (as part of the Leonardo da Vinci scheme) who need leading-by-the-hand for a couple of days. So much to do!

Still; Knightmare Night tonight; that’s always a giggle, and we’ll probably get to the end of season 3 and start season 4, which is the first one with pre-filmed outdoor scenes, the “dragon flight” sequence, the eye shield, and Pickle.

IXUS 5 Repair Guide

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Bookmarked via del.icio.us: IXUS 5 Repair Guide.

Paul Mann Categorises The Wiki World

Paul seems to be celebrating finishing his hand-ins by categorising the entire RockMonkey wiki. Go see the newly-improved RockMonkey category structure, starting your explorations at category root…

Geek Night

Last night’s Geek Night was fab: thanks to everybody who came. I didn’t win a single game, but that’s not what it’s about at all, really, is it. Kings & Things was fab, and it was great to get to play Tigris & Euphrates again (and lose for a change, damnit, at it). It was also great to watch the Illuminati game opposite, in which Andy destroyed the United Nations and Sian (who seemed to quite enjoy it, the happy little conspiracy theorist that she is) fought to control “weird” groups, and then there was the Chrononauts game with Jimmy and Pete, and… it was a fab night, anyway.

In other good news, Andy‘s going to launch his version of my Dingbats Challenge, soon, I gather, having receive a little technical support from my version in getting it set-up. Watch this space.

And finally – people coming to Knightmare Night tomorrow: fear not! For time turns and season four is on it’s way… there shall be at least two more Knightmare Nights hereafter!

Right; back to it… but first, lunch.

Hollywood Pizza

Hey, I was just looking at Troma Night‘s last Hollywood Pizza receipt, and I’ve noticed that they’ve stopped writing the full address at the top of the receipt for the delivery driver. Now they just write “Cambrian Place”.

After 75+ Troma Nights, we’ve finally managed:

To be their only customer in Cambrian Place: or, at least, their only customer worth mentioning on a Saturday night.
To get them to regularly bring the pizza straight in and up to the living room, if we leave the door unlocked and put a sign on it requesting this, and tip the delivery driver.
To know who we are based on the size and time of our order, and so not have to state the address, sometimes.

Goals for the next 75 Troma Nights include:

Improving upon point #2 – if we don’t call by 9pm on a Saturday, they should be at a point where they’re considering calling us. To help them in this, we will now always give them the landline phone number when we order.
To get a regular customer discount – we hear that the owner is particularly unlikely to provide this (a customer that orders several times a week hasn’t yet managed, but perhaps we can persuade him otherwise by mentioning that we’ve been approached by Pier Pizza (Pizza Royale) with a better offer… hmm, perhaps we should wait until Troma Night 150 first).
Getting them to suggest pizza based upon who is present (“Is Andy there? Okay, so that’s a Meat Feast…”) or, at least, to reverse this association upon delivery (“I’ve got a Vegetarian With Jalapenos On Half, umm… that for Sian and Ruth, right?” from the deliveryperson). Perhaps we could not take the pizzas from them until they’ve learned everybody’s names, and work up fromt here.